The guard stood casually in the cold, yet I sensed a tense awareness in him. Two of the guys out there came together and one lit a cigarette.
The balaclava in my crosshairs. If these guys wore armor, I needed a head shot.
I fired.
I didn’t wait to see if I hit him because I had to move fast. I swung the barrel and the second head came into view and crackcrackcrack and this time I saw the guy go down. They were both down. I rolled left, screamed from the pain. I was on a roller coaster. My head was spinning. The muzzle bursts would have revealed my location, and the sound of gunfire, too. I was aware of figures scattering, moving left and right, throwing themselves to the ground.
Two down. Two or three left.
Whatever was happening inside my head was climaxing. The booming and dizziness came in a roar. I stayed in the depression, peered out and saw orange glow, a charcoal heap, a couple of body-sized lumps in snow, but nothing moving except smoke. They’d found shelter, too.
Someone out there shouted a name. “Andre? ANDRE!”
Then, the same voice, louder, deep: “Ty v poryadke?”
Another, coarser voice: “Zdyes bolit…”
“Kakoy Movoz!” The words ended in a gasping, choking sound, which cut off abruptly.
Russian?
Now the deep voice was there again, from the dark, from the left side. But I couldn’t see anyone. “Jens?”
“Ya v poryadke!”
That was Jens’s voice, but there was no pain in it. The living guys were taking stock.
“Niki?”
No answer.
“Niki?”
So. Niki dead, hopefully. Two dead. At least two more mobile, including Jens, and maybe one more in the plane. Yes, because the lights in the plane went off suddenly. There were at least three of them.
Shooting suddenly erupted out there, coming at me from two locations. It tore up the snow to my left and right. I wriggled back. They knew where I was.
I fired and heard a scream. I needed to move location, but my head was spinning. If they were smart they’d be using hand signals, or whispers, and would come at me from flanking directions.
I told myself to roll right, and crawl out of the depression. But my muscles refused to move. A fine time to run out of gas! It was like one of those nightmares where you are lying on the street and a bus is coming, or maybe you are running away from something, and it is about to hit you. Safety is a foot away. You need to move a little. You try to take a step, but your muscles refuse to operate.
My right leg just lay there, twitching. I couldn’t feel it anymore. My hands were tingling, not hurting, but just not there at all.
I rolled onto my back, pushed with the other leg, and backed farther down into the depression. My one chance was that they would assume I’d moved because moving is what they would do. Anyway, I had no choice. My blood was probably filling my brain cavity. The snowmobile ride had worsened my condition. Offensive action was out.
With the pain coming harder, I had to concentrate to move even fingers. Move! I was disembodied, detached from any connection to earth, sight, sky. Vision is a tunnel and mine was contracting. I watched my breath rise and wondered if it dissipated by the time it reached the top of the depression, or whether someone crawling toward me from three feet away would see swirls of condensation that, like cigarette smoke, would pinpoint where I lay.
I listened but only heard my own heartbeat. My fitful breathing sounded like a jet engine to me. I did not hear anyone crawling up there, whispering, flashing signals.
I could only hope that when someone came over the top, they would be directly in front of me, not behind or to the side.
Suddenly the snow turned green, not mildly green, not a hint, but an electric hue that burst onto the snow like lines on a sonar screen. A luminous presence that extended into the depression and danced on my snowsuit and created green spots on the M4 and illuminated a small burrow in the snow six inches to my left. Vole hole. Some animal’s hiding place. Emerald lights. Oz of the Arctic.
I thought I was hallucinating but realized it was the aurora borealis, back again, stage lights highlighting the cripple. The clouds had parted. I saw, high above, the pulsating, greatest show on Earth, the glowing star called Polaris, by which I’d tried to summon Eddie, and the northern constellations, Vega… and I thought, Close your eyes, lay here. But that was a surrender voice. Light meant opportunity. And anyway, at that moment, I heard the vaguest hint of a scraping sound to my right.
The whole tundra was probably bathed in green out there. They’d feel exposed. They’d move faster.
The lights danced and flickered and formed geometric patterns on my parka. The sky and stars were drenched by an undulating curtain of magnetic light.
Silence.
Maybe I’d been wrong about the sound.
No, between heartbeats, it was back. The smallest brushing. Then a pause. Then the sound.
And then, directly before me, two fingers of a three-fingered shooting mitten appeared at the lip of the depression. They dug into the snow. The black top of a balaclava followed, and then a forehead smeared with black.
I shot him in the face.
My cheek lay in the snow with the lights dancing inches away. The lights smelled like Avgas. They smelled like a fired M4. They smelled like the dead man lying at the top of the depression had voided himself.
“You don’t look so good, Joe,” said Jens Erik Holte’s voice from behind me, and slightly left. “You’re not shot, though. So, what?”
Something, a rifle I assumed, poked my back. A boot appeared. My M4 lifted away. Jens, kneeling beside me, probed for hidden weapons. It was an expert search and it involved, at one point, using his foot to turn me over, which caused someone to scream. I realized the screamer was me.
“Huh! A vest! I should have known. You’re not hit, so what’s the problem? You got four of us, Joe. Four!”
He squatted a few feet off, like a tribesman in the jungle. He didn’t look angry, though, and he certainly was not hurt. A dark brown fur-flapped hat had replaced his snowmobile helmet. He still wore a thermal snowmobile suit. He was armed with what looked like an AK-47 variation, from the banana clip and length.
There was no rush. He sat down heavily, sighed, and nodded at the dead man, without breaking eye contact. “That was the pilot, Joe. How do I get out now?”
I said nothing. I tried to, but I couldn’t.
“You’re pretty busted up. I don’t know how to fly a plane — just choppers. Do you?”
I tasted something coppery and metallic. Joe Rush, still life in the Arctic.
Jens sighed, disgusted. “I didn’t think so, not that you’re in shape to move. Also, my snowmobile’s in the plane now, with a busted chain. Yours? The lights showed it, out there. Got gas?”
I managed to shake my head.
“I guess I could siphon fuel from the plane. Avgas ought to work in a snowmobile, don’t you think? No? Yes? No? No opinion? What good are you. Help me out here, man.”
The northern lights danced across his strong Nordic features. Handsome guy. Adolf Hitler’s ideal. He said, “I would have been out of the country in no time, but now, if Homza’s got satellites up, shit. Canada is at least two hundred miles from here, and if they’re tracking, even if they can’t reach you in time, they call the Mounties, and they’re waiting when you arrive.”